Josephf — so then I assume that a mechaber sefer would have no complaints against me if I copied his sefer in a country where copyrights are not recognized?
In any event, the idea that rabbonim allow willy-nilly copying is certainly not true. In the past they have recognized the need for protection of people who put efforts into work. For example, very often, if a printer put out a new edition of Shas, the rabbis of the area would protect his work by granting him the exclusive rights to print a Shas in the area for a term (usually 25 years or so). They understood that if this were not done, no one would invest the time and effort into producing new sefarim. The same could be said for almost any intellectual property.
The Wolf